Solved: What factors influence performance? Is motivation the most important factor?

Q. What factors influence performance? Is motivation the most important factor? Why or why not?

Leadership at workplace: The kind of leaders or managers one gets at work place is a critical influence on employee’s performance. It’s the managers who could motivate or de-motivate workers with their behaviour or leadership style. A participative manager would be encouraging rather than a leader who micro manages everything. It’s the leader of the group who inspires his folks to perform with high energy and focus towards organisation goals.

Motivation: Carrying on from the impact of leadership on performance, next factor we have is level of motivation that the workers enjoy. A highly motivated group is will always perform at high level as compared to a de-motivated group of employees. There are several factors that motivate humans and those can be utilised by the organisation to keep the work force motivated. A motivated workforce will be able to easily align itself with organisational goals and will be focused on achieving it.

Workplace Environment: Working environment is again a key factor in influencing workers performance. A positive and motivating workplace environment is conducive for high performance and successful achievement of organisational goals. Organisations should strive to make the workplace a fun place to work at where employees have freedom to express their thoughts, are free to bring creative initiative to do a job etc. This will provide a conducive ground for high performance.

Culture: Organisational culture is another important factor that impacts performance. A strong, open culture which fosters openness, healthy competition, innovative approach towards work is always healthy and conducive for high performance. A strong culture helps employees adapt to organisation goals and achievement more effectively.

Training and Development: Training and development of employees is another important tool that has a positive impact on employee performance. Training helps develop employee professional skills as well as develops personality. They are better trained to handle workplace challenges and ever changing business environment.

Performance Evaluation: Evaluating employee performance is a key influence on one’s performance. Managers should work with the employees to make a plan for their career development and closely follow with them regularly so that they are on track for a better performance. A par performance according to the plan is bound to be motivating factor.

In my opinion, motivation is one of the major factors influencing employee performance but it is not the single most important factor. Other factors mentioned above are equally important. Positive aspects of these factors actually play crucial part in keeping the workforce motivated. Its difficult to motivate employees if his or her manager is behaving correctly, or the workplace environment is conducive or his appraisal are not fair and accurate. Hence we see that motivating employees takes a lot of factors and influences, hence employees can’t be motivated in isolation but several other factor also needs to be present for better performance